The Ministry of Labor is preparing a road map that will lay the foundations for changes and interventions in the field of Collective Agreements in six months after the approval of the Community Directive on the minimum wage.
This is an initiative included in the scope of the Directive, which must become law of the state by mid-November. As the issue of Collective Agreements is moving at very low levels, the political leadership of the ministry seeks to provide an additional stimulus to support wages in the private sector. Therefore, until the completion of the relevant road map, it is expected to review all those memorandum measures that the trade unions complain of preventing the signing of new Collective Agreements.
In the first phase, it seems that it is now realized that only the practical support of the Collective Agreements can soon lead to higher wages. Successive increases in minimum wages may affect about 600,000 workers, but they do not help as much as they should in the area of average, nominal and real wages. That is why, after all, the recent report of the Labor Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) showed that the last quarter of 2023 closed with the real average income from work in Greece at 90% of the purchasing power compared to 2019, compared to 97% in the EU of the 27 member states.
The drop in nominal real average income (as a consequence mainly of the increase in consumer goods, which was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in wages) is recorded in almost all sectors of the economy despite the fact that labor productivity is higher than in 2019. Specifically, there is an increase of 1.6% in Industry, 20.4% in Manufacturing, 7.4% in Construction, 4.5% in Wholesale and Retail Trade, and 29.1% in Information and Communication.
However, the average per capita real sectoral wage, in the absence of Collective Agreements, does not present a corresponding increase.
